Laboratory Reports from the Center on Antisocial Drug Dependence

*Mail Stop F478 12469 East 17th Place Aurora, CO 80045 United States of America susan.young@ucdenver.edu

Risky behaviors are behaviors that may result, unpredictably, in either rewards or punishments. They may be socially approved or contrary to social norms and laws (e.g., a boxing match, vs. a street fight). Adolescents as a group do more risky behaviors than adults [1], and imaging of adolescents' brains suggests that age-related events in brain development may underlie that elevated risk-taking [2]. However, compared with other adolescents, those with conduct disorder (CD) [3] do more --and more dangerous --risky behaviors (including frequent fighting, fights with weapons, robberies, break-ins, etc.) [4]. Moreover, many youths who take those risks also take risks with intoxicating substances, so adolescent CD and substance use disorders (SUD) [3] frequently co-occur [5]. In laboratory tests [6,7], as in real life, youths with CD and SUD do more risky behaviors than other adolescents.

Risk-taking is part of a larger complex of interrelated problem behaviors conceptualized as “behavioral disinhibition” (BD). We define BD as a lifelong behavioral disposition that involves excessive pursuit of exciting, risky, appetitive stimuli coupled with an unusual disregard of aversive consequences for such behavior. BD is a latent construct that is assumed to have an underlying continuum of liability ranging from absent to severe among different persons; many youths with severe BD meet criteria for both CD and SUD [8].

We developed this construct through a study of comorbidity in a community-based sample of adolescent twins [9,10]. For these youth, we operationalized BD using summary data collected with structured, self-report, psychiatric interviews and self-report personality questionnaires. Age-adjusted, lifetime symptom counts for DSM-IV [3] CD and attention­deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), derived from the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC 4.1 [11]), as well as a count of substances (both licit and illicit) used repeatedly, derived from the Composite International Diagnostic Interview – Substance Abuse Module (CIDI-SAM [12]) provided three of our four BD measures. Additionally, we included a summary score of self-reported novelty seeking based on Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ [13]). Using a structural equation model designed specifically for genetically informative samples, the covariance among these four measures (a ‘common BD factor’) was parsed into genetic and environmental components. Results suggested that the heritability of BD exceeded .80 [9]. A strikingly similar study conducted at the University of Minnesota confirmed these findings in an independent (and somewhat older) twin sample, using symptoms of substance use disorders, CD, antisocial personality symptoms, and a questionnaire measure of constraint [14,15]. Further analysis in our longitudinal twin sample demonstrated a significant genetic correlation between BD and laboratory-based indices of executive function, particularly cognitive inhibition [11].

Quantifying BD for Neuroimaging Studies

Because of the high cost and subject burden of neuorimaging procedures used for research, we generally study small samples (n ≈ 20-30) [16]. In order to ensure that our composite BD scores could be scaled relative to individuals in the general population in the same age range, we constructed our BD composite from four measures that were utilized in both the neuroimaging samples as well as a large community-based sample of adolescents aged 14-18 years [10], who were previously assessed using the same instruments. We operationalized BD as the composite of 4 measures including:

We computed means and standard deviations for each behavioral measure in 372 male and 414 female adolescents. Using standard principal component analysis (PCA) we extracted the maximum covariance among the 4 behavioral measures in the community sample. This produces a standardized factor loading for each behavioral measure. Results are tabulated separately (below) boys and girls, followed by a combined sample of 677 adolescents. The combined sample consists of only 677 individuals because the109 females who had a male sibling in the boys-only sample were removed in order to maintain a sample of individuals from unique families.

Boys (N=372)

Min

Max

﻿ Mean

Std. Dev.

Factor Wgt.

Abuse/Depend Symptoms

0

22

1.403

3.360

.365

CD Symptom Count

0

12

1.253

1.695

.342

CBCL Attention Score

0

10

1.255

1.744

.368

CBCL Hyper/Impulse Score

0

13

1.702

2.284

.364

Interview Age in Years

14

18

16.13

1.240

----

Girls (N=414)

Min

Max

﻿ Mean

Std. Dev.

Factor Wgt.

Abuse/Depend Symptoms

0

26

1.097

3.353

.313

CD Symptom Count

0

7

0.655

0.976

.346

CBCL Attention Score

0

9

0.853

1.436

.404

CBCL Hyper/Impulse Score

0

15

1.469

2.077

.417

Interview Age in Years

14

18

16.20

1.245

----

Combined* (N=677)

Min

Max

﻿ Mean

Std. Dev.

Factor Wgt.

Abuse/Depend Symptoms

0

26

1.291

3.423

.349

CD Symptom Count

0

12

0.959

1.442

.339

CBCL Attention Score

0

10

1.087

1.646

.372

CBCL Hyper/Impulse Score

0

15

1.610

2.197

.378

Interview Age in Years

14

18

16.24

1.200

----

For each neuroimaging subject we express his/her scores on the four behavioral measures as deviations (SD units) from the relevant (i.e., male, female, or mixed gender) community-sample mean. We then generate a composite BD score for each neuroimaging subject by summing his/her factor-weighted scores on each of the four behavioral measures. We present the imaging subjects’ BD scores as plots in standard deviation units (z-scores) from the mean BD score (standardized to 0) of the relevant community sample.